November 21, 2016

When WoWS Grinds My Gears

I'm still playing World of Warships, though nowhere near as often anymore. Still, I've managed to break into Tier VI a couple of times while playing almost exclusively against bots. My first Tier VI ship was the New Mexico, a big, slow, heavily armored US battleship that costs 45000xp stock... no small feat, considering that a good match vs bots will net you ~500xp.

My second Tier VI ship is the Cleveland, an American light cruiser that holds the distinction of being built in greater numbers than any class of cruiser by any navy ever. It's a good ship, I just hate it... I just can't get the hang of its rainbow-arc guns... but that's not why I'm here. Like many Tier VI cruisers, the Cleveland has a "float fighter" on-board that it can launch for limited protection against enemy planes.
In this particular case, it's a non-existent float variant of the Grumman F3F "Flying Barrel." This cheeses me off something fierce, and it's one of the few things I really dislike about this game: the amount of "Paper Ships" involved... or in this case, "Paper Planes". There was a perfectly good float fighter out there that they could have used, one that actually existed!
The Grumman F4F-3S "Wildcatfish". Yup, they basically stapled a pair of floats to the underside of a Wildcat and ran it through testing. I can only imagine that performance was... well, let's be charitable and call it "lacking." But who cares? When you've got a cool nickname like "Wildcatfish", you don't need to be fast or maneuverable.
It was no A6M2-N "Canoe of Destiny" though, I'll tell you what.

1
I'm glad to hear you're still playing occasionally! I didn't like the Cleveland a whole lot, and sold mine when I progressed to the Pensacola. But it's widely considered one of the core ships of the game that is worth keeping around. It does all it's roles well, with good armor, awesome anti-air for the tier, decent speed and maneuverability, and guns that while they aren't terribly powerful, are good for setting lots and lots of fires. But one of it's main selling points is that it's tier VI, where cruiser play is still somewhat forgiving.

Posted by: David at November 22, 2016 01:16 AM (9UHFZ)

2
I think the monofloatplanes are reserved for higher tiers. I can't say for sure, because I exchanged it for radar as soon as it was available.

3
Somehow I ended up going up the Japanese Carrier track, and I'm really annoyed when my Ryujo goes up against an Independence, because in a pure fighter vs fighter matchup, my fighters always lose. It being 4 vs 6 doesn't help either.

I guess I keep missing you (with torps...bah-doomp! "thankyouIllbehereuntilTuesday!") when you're on. I'm down to the last 20k xp for Takao, and clench my teeth every time I see someone with theirs. I've gotten so used to grinding damage I have to remember to change my play for base xp.

6
I haven't kept a hard count, but fuzzy math tells me I'm averaging between 1000-1100 base xp a battle. So after last night I'm looking at about 40 battles. Not sure why I'm feeling so driven to get it. Maybe because the T7 ARP cruisers have been underwhelming so far? I guess I'm having difficulty coming to grips with the funky gun arcs.

I usually see our host on quite late (but then I'm usually still on when he drops out).

8
Kinda like the WOTInfo site for World of Tanks, eh? First time I've looked at it. Apparently my rating has really been going down since I started the effort with the Tier 6's. I have to wonder if I've been enjoying the game more not knowing.

(Been weeks since I played WoT, but I was doing fairly well. I will probably suck for a while when I get back to it).

I still have about 60K to go. It'll be a good excuse to avoid the Black Friday crowds.

9
The grind for Takao was quite painful but she's a nice ship. I managed it last week after a few days of buckling down and doing little else. From my research on how best to earn XP, it's going to depend on your playstyle a lot, but it's worth noting that the base XP goes up for each tier, so the highest tier you can run successfully is going to be your best choice. I made most of my XP using Tirpitz and North Carolina. The Amagi and Gneisnau are my other battleships, and I don't earn the same kind of XP or credits reliably in those. For me, the rare DD battle where I stay alive and everyone blunders into torps still produces the epic scores, but more often going out in a DD results in me getting blown up before I do hardly any damage. Going out in a high tier cruiser is a crap shoot, I often end up being a critical part of the team strategy, denying areas to the dds and keeping the planes off the juicy targets, but rarely do I actually do a ton of damage and earn a lot of XP.
My rating is actually better than I expected, but still not all that good.

Posted by: David at November 23, 2016 07:12 PM (9UHFZ)

10
Well, truth be told, my average XP doesn't reflect recent performance. I did a lot of bumbling around in the first couple tiers before starting to look at ship stats and tailor my playstyle.

The hard part is balancing familial obligations with playtime. If I was still bache-ing it, I'd of had the grind done in a few days.

11
This has been really painful, since the only ships I have to complete the Takao Missions are my Ryujo carrier and my ARP Harugo. The Ryujo seems to ALWAYS draw an Independence as an opponent, which swats down all my planes with it's 6 to 4 fighter squadron advantage. I recently equipped the variant with extra fighters, but that leaves me only one TB and one Bomber Squad. Combine that with some really bad teams and losses, and I'm turning in XP of as low as 450 in some matches. It's frustrating and painful. And I still have 40K XP to go....

12
One of the recent matchmaker changes is that it tries very hard to pit the CVs against the other nation. In some ways that makes it easier, in other ways it makes it harder.
I found that when running a Ryujo against an Indepedence (or same thing at the next tier), the best thing to do is to use your fighters as bait and/or sacrificial lambs to keep the enemy fighters away from what is truly important, your torpedo bombers. Spread the fighters out, scout the map, draw the enemy fighters away from an enemy BB, send the bombers in for the kill. If the enemy is keeping his fighters over the fleet instead of following your planes around, then go for the CV itself. You also have the firepower pull off a start of the game CV snipe if he doesn't have a Cleveland or equivalent guarding him, you just have to pay attention and be ready to pick another target if you see too may cruisers or fighters back on defense. But if you're playing an IJN tier VI-VII CV right, you should have a CV or BB kill in the first couple of minutes, before the USN CV is really on his feet.
And of course, if you possibly can, dogfight over your own ships where their AA can help. If he follows you into AA cover, excellent; if he breaks off, at least your fighters survived to keep harassing.

Posted by: David at November 25, 2016 05:14 PM (9UHFZ)

13
David, I saw you in a Notser video recently. He was chuckling over the screen name. (Around December 11th, his million credit Missouri video)

14
Yep, that was pointed out to me by someone in a match a few days later and I looked up the video. I remember that match, not one of my finest, I got overextended in my Roon and found myself facing a whole host of firepower, much of it in the hands of one of the experts.